Fortunately for most people, a big family usually doesn't
materialize overnight the way it did not so long ago for the
McCaugheys of Iowa who one day had just one child--and the next had
seven more. Big families generally develop over a period of years,
with each new addition joining the bunch after the older ones are
well on their feet and somewhat self-sufficient.

While it's never easy to juggle the needs of several
children all at once, most parents eventually figure out how to
manage. Some even find advantages to having a larger brood:
Siblings can be each other's playmates, role models and even
baby-sitters, lightening their parents' load.

For the entrepreneur hoping to expand one or two locations into
a chain, there may be no better model to study than that of the
large family. Indeed, entrepreneurs who have successfully gone
through the process, as well as expert observers, all agree that
growing a company into a chain is strikingly similar to raising a
large family.

The key similarity between the two is this: "The more of
them you have-- children or stores--the less attention you have for
each one, so you have to empower them more and trust them
more," says Earnest Edward Lacey, regional director of the
Tennessee Small Business Development Center at the University of
Memphis. "They won't all turn out to have the same
personality, but if you raise them right, they'll each do you
proud in their own way."

Dennis Rodkin is a business writer in Chicago.

Are You Sure You Want to Do This?

Like the parents of six who think back to the years when it was
possible to lavish unlimited love and time on the first child,
chain owners often cherish sepia-tinted memories of their start-up
days. When they had just one location, they could easily have close
relationships with, and keep tabs on, every employee. Having more
locations means sacrificing some of that closeness.

But as no parents of six would voluntarily send away five of
their kids just to recapture memories, neither would Jim Petr, 36,
consider closing 16 of his 17 Milwaukee PC retail stores in
Wisconsin to go back to the good old days when he was personally
assembling custom-built computer systems for buyers in his single
store.

"One of the biggest advantages to growing is
credibility," Petr says. "Once we started opening more
stores, it seemed as if overnight, customers and suppliers started
looking at us as an established player, not some little ma and pa
shop. The first thing people used to ask was, `Will you be in
business next year when my computer needs service?' They
don't ask that anymore."

Although various forces may push an entrepreneur to grow a
chain, the major one cited by those who have built them is that
there's strength in numbers. Petr says he realized a single
store in Milwaukee would never last against the national computer
chains. "Growth was the only way we could survive," he
says.

The growth of companies that become chains also boosts
visibility and purchasing power with vendors. "There are
companies I wasn't important to 12 years ago that I'm an
important client for now," says Bryan Collier, 43, who, in 24
years, has expanded Gardner-Collier Jewelry, a family-owned jewelry
store in Kirksville, Missouri, into a four-store chain. That
leverage, of course, makes for the kind of quality and prices that
retail customers notice.

Links in the Chain

It's not just vendors and customers who feel more
comfortable--employees often view expansion as beneficial, too. In
some cases, growth enhances your ability to hold on to good people
by providing additional opportunities for them. When employees see
there's a range of jobs within your company they can grow into,
they might take a longer-term view of their tenure with you.

Staffing is, in fact, the central issue for the head of a
growing chain. Business owners and experts are unanimous in their
belief that stocking expansion locations with the right people is
fundamental to a budding chain's success.

"In the computer business, I've seen a lot of people
who have one store and haven't been able to expand because they
haven't hired the right people," Petr says. "If you
hire people who work hard and give them an environment in which
they can succeed, you'll grow."

Nevertheless, for the entrepreneur who has built a successful
operation by single-handedly juggling the roles of chief
salesperson, accountant, personnel manager and who knows what else,
staffing--and the delegating that comes with it--can be a very high
hurdle.

"Suddenly you have no choice but to delegate
authority," says Donald Hoy, director of Executive Education
at Milwaukee's Marquette University. "If you're
[opening multiple] sites that might be pretty spread out, you have
to face the fact that one person can't be everywhere at
once."

The downside of having many more people among whom to divide the
work is that you may start to feel like a kindergarten teacher, Hoy
says. "You have 30 kids all demanding the same level of
attention," he explains, "and especially if the chain is
expanding rapidly, management isn't going to be in a position
to provide all [of it immediately]."

Collier says that with stores, as with kids, "You tend to
get stuck focusing on the ones with problems and not having the
time to look in on the ones that are doing okay." Which in
turn leaves the better-off locations with room to generate problems
of their own.

Solution: Put each location in the steady, capable hands of an
employee who will act like an owner. Give managers both the
responsibility to make their locations work and the power to make
it happen. Lacey suggests choosing people already working for you
who are ready to take on more responsibility instead of bringing in
new people.

Promoting from within is a smart tactic because it moves up the
employees who have proved themselves to be both good at the work
and supportive of the company's methods and objectives.
"[They're] the kind of [people] you're going to trust
to do things the way you'd do them if you were there,"
says Chuck Wolf, 56, who built a seven-store film and
photo-processing chain into a nationwide network of 770 locations
over the past 25 years. "You've seen them work, and you
know they're up on the goals you've laid out for your
stores."

For the small chain, however, Hoy warns that the most obvious
staff source for the new location might not be the best. If the
original location is bursting with motivated, effective employees,
move some over to the new place, he says, but be selective. Moving
too many people out of the original location can make it the
weakest link in the chain--when it ought to be the strongest.

"It might be that store No. 1, because it's up and
running, is easier to manage than store No. 11," Hoy
acknowledges, "but if you hurt store No. 1, it will probably
be harder to recover there than at the new stores because [its]
loyal clientele are going to think they've been
abandoned."

On top of that, employees of the old store might start to sound
like the older kids griping that the baby of the family gets all
the breaks. "They'll start to notice that they don't
have new carpet or shiny new equipment," Hoy says. "They
worry about their place in the chain."

Collier feels a good way to combat that attitude is to remind
employees at the older location that they're the big brothers
and sisters with important responsibilities now. "People
working in our original store know that we make the merchandise
selection for the other stores, so a lot of the success of the rest
of the chain depends on them," he says.

It's also essential to keep in mind that a chain of stores
need not be a string of clones. Trying to duplicate the existing
business in a new location might render some subtle differences
invisible. Collier found that out when one of his new stores
wasn't living up to projections. He carefully examined which
items at that store were selling and discovered he'd misjudged
the local market. "Our higher-priced merchandise, which sells
well at other stores, was out of reach for the people who shopped
in the store," he says. After Collier did a little strategic
reshuffling of its product line, the started performing as
expected.

Homes Away From Home

After staffing, finding the right locations is the next most
important aspect of expansion. Often, it's a matter of
pinpointing the things about the original location that made it
work and looking for other locales with similar features.

Wolf says once he'd opened a few dozen locations, he got to
where he could quickly find the right spot in a new city. He wanted
high-traffic sites in affluent neighborhoods with large numbers of
families. With such a streamlined vision, "I can learn about
any [small] city in two days, or a big city in a week," he
says. Wolfe believes any good business idea ought to be easily
transplanted to similar settings in other cities.

At the same time, Hoy warns against assuming that all similar
locales are identical. Before expanding into an unfamiliar city, he
suggests forging a relationship with a knowledgeable local who can
help you navigate the new waters, whether it's at city hall or
in the local ad outlets. And whenever expansion takes you across
state lines, seek legal advice on how tax laws and other
regulations differ from those in your home state.

Finally, Lacey reminds entrepreneurs who are looking to build
chains that, as with raising children, each one is easier to handle
than the ones that came before, if only because you're more
experienced. Petr agrees. Now that he's built an infrastructure
to support 17 stores and the three more he's planning, he says,
"I don't see any limit to the number of stores we could
have."